Education in Brief for Thursday, March 6, 2014

FROM WIRE REPORTS

Published 10:01 am, Thursday, March 6, 2014

MISSISSIPPI

Board names Rankins as Alcorn State president

JACKSON — Alfred Rankins Jr. was named the next president of Alcorn State University on Tuesday by the Mississippi College Board, which chose an insider following an abbreviated search that became necessary after its former president resigned over a purchasing scandal.

The only person interviewed for the job, replaces M. Christopher Brown II, who stepped down in December as the board moved to suspend him during an investigation. Meeting in Lorman, board members unanimously voted for their 42-year-old deputy commissioner of academic affairs to take the reins at the 4,000-student university.

“I’m just ready to come back home and get to work,” said Rankins, a Greenville native who earned his undergraduate degree from Alcorn.

Rankins served for a year as interim president of Mississippi Valley State University. Board members said they believe Rankins proved he could lead during that time.

“After five years of working with him, I know he loves this university and he loves this state,” said Higher Education Chancellor Hank Bounds.

Rankins said he wasn’t sure when he would start, but didn’t foresee a “long delay.”

Records reviewed by The Associated Press show Alcorn spent almost $89,000 on furniture and renovations at the president’s house without seeking bids as required under state law. Documents also show Alcorn paid $85,000 in fees to a concert production company associated with a Brown aide, possibly violating state ethics laws. And an auditor said the school spent more than $67,000 in bond money on projects not allowed in the lending agreement.

Norris Edney has been serving as acting president since Brown resigned.

Usually, the board appoints a search committee, hires a search firm to look for a new president and interviews multiple candidates, a process that takes months. However, last year, the board changed the rules governing presidential choices to allow it to speed up the process. No search firm was hired for Alcornam, and the board search committee named Jan. 24 chose Rankins barely a month later.

Rankins met Thursday with faculty, staff, students and alumni on both the Natchez and Alcorn campuses. The school has a third branch campus in Vicksburg.

“My ultimate vision for Alcorn is for Alcorn State to be the model university, not in the state of Mississippi, but nationally,” he said repeatedly.

To students, he pledged an effort to make the university work smoothly for them.

“I know what it is like to be a student at Alcorn. I know the good, I know the bad. I want you to know that if I am president, I will listen to the concerns of the students.”

Rankins has said he wants to wait for the state auditor and Ethics Commission to finish their investigations before proposing changes. But he repeatedly made clear that he didn’t want to repeat Brown’s mistakes.

“We can’t do anything about the past, but we can make sure past mistakes don’t happen again,” he said. “I know how to get things done and I can do things the right way.”

TENNESSEE

State lawmakers look at in-state tuition changes

NASHVILLE — Supporters of legislation to make students in the country illegally eligible for in-state tuition say the proposal is fair and would benefit Tennessee’s economy.

The measure, called the Tuition Equality bill, was scheduled to be heard in the House Education Subcommittee on Tuesday but the panel adjourned before getting to it.

Currently, such students pay nearly three times as much for higher education — the out-of-state rate — even if they’ve lived in Tennessee for most of their lives.

“We can’t keep punishing children for what their parents did or didn’t do,” said Senate sponsor Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga.

House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick has also signed onto the bill.

“It not only helps them with their future, but I think it helps our economy and helps everybody in Tennessee if we have a better educated population,” the Chattanooga Republican told reporters outside the meeting.

Under the proposal, a student would have to meet academic standards and attend Tennessee schools for at least five years before graduating from high school.

Proponents of the legislation said it would benefit the state with increased funding from in-state tuition and, they hope, produce more graduates who can contribute to the workforce.

“Every time a student pays in-state tuition, the state makes money, higher education makes money,” said Eben Cathey, spokesman for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. “All around, this bill is a net gain for the entire state.”

At least 19 states have enacted similar legislation, according to the coalition.

Monica Greppin-Watts is the spokeswoman for the Tennessee Board of Regents, which oversees six state universities, 13 community colleges and 27 colleges of applied technology.

She said the bill would have a “positive fiscal note because it could bring students into our institutions; students who most likely would not have previously enrolled because of out-ofstate costs.”“The revenue will be incidental, however, to the greater benefit of serving these students and increasing the number of collegeeducatedindividuals in ourstate,” she said.Jzmin Ramirez, of Nashville, Tenn., graduated high school last year and was hoping to attend college and major in business administration, but the 19-year-old has had to take a year off to raise money to pay for her tuition.

“I have to pay three times as much as my peers,” said Ramirez, who was among about 40 supporters of the legislation that packed the crowded subcommittee room. “I would hands down be already enrolled in school if I had the opportunity to pay in-state tuition.”

WYOMING

Halliburton latest donor to UW energy lab

CHEYENNE — Halliburton Co. is the latest corporation to support construction of an energy research laboratory at the University of Wyoming in response to the state’s push to improve energy and engineering programs there.

Officials from Halliburton and the state said Tuesday that the energy services company is donating $3 million. Of that, $2 million will help fund construction of a laboratory complex while $1 million will support research. The state will match those amounts.

Dick McGinity, president of UW, said Halliburton’s contribution will help with construction of the High Bay Research Facility. The 60,000-squarefoot facility on North 19th Street in Laramie is expected to be completed in 2016.

The research building will provide a space for large-scale projects, including work on transforming gas and coal into liquids, McGinity said. Other companies that have supported the project include Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Baker Hughes Inc.

Halliburton’s donation puts UW within $2 million of achieving its $15 million goal for private industry donations, McGinity said. The state will match that total.

Gov. Matt Mead said industry support has followed the work of a state task force that’s been looking at how to make the UW College of Engineering and Applied Sciences a “tier one” institution. He said many members are UW graduates who have distinguished themselves worldwide in the energy business.

Sen. Phil Nicholas, R-Laramie, has been instrumental in focusing the Legislature’s attention on the importance of upgrading the UW engineering program.

Now Senate majority floor leader, Nicholas was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee a few years ago when the Legislature approved spending $50 million for another engineering building now under construction at UW.

Nicholas said Tuesday that his children are all in engineering and he became aware that UW’s facilities weren’t keeping pace with those at competing universities.

“It was a great opportunity for me over the last year to see how former UW executives came back and provided a critique of where we’ve been, where should we go, and they helped us develop a plan to lead the college into worldclass research in certain niches that we could afford and where we could attract money,” Nicholas said.

“What that means for parents is when you send your children to UW for engineering, that they’re going to get a world-class education,” Nicholas said. He said creating that welltrained workforce will help to recruit businesses to Wyoming. IOWA

Data: Sex offenses up at some Iowa universities

DES MOINES — The Iowa Board of Regents released crime data Tuesday that show an increase in reported sex offenses at two of the state’s three public universities, with a recent spike in complaints and controversy at the University of Iowa adding to the information’s impact.

The data were released as part of a yearly report on campus safety and security at Iowa State University, the University of Northern Iowa and the University of Iowa. The information covers 2012 and 2013.

The data on sex offenses cover several categories, including reports of rape and sexual assault. At Iowa State University in Ames, there were 13 reported sex offenses in 2013, an increase from nine in 2012. Eleven of those sex offenses in 2013 were cases of rape, according to the data.

At the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, there were two reported sex offenses in 2013, an increase from 1 in 2012. The data show both of those sex offenses in 2013 were cases of rape.

The University of Iowa, which has received recent media attention for a jump in the number of complaints about incidents of sexual assault, had four reported sex offenses in 2013, a decrease from eight in 2012. None of the sex offenses in 2013 involved rape, according to the data.

The crime data do not reflect incidents where victims choose not to formally file a report to police. The distinction means some of those highly publicized reports of sexual assault at UI are not included.

Joe Brennan, spokesman for the University of Iowa, acknowledged the technicality of how the data were collected. Since last August, the school has issued eight “timely warning” notifications involving incidents of sexual assault. Timely warning notifications involve officials telling students, faculty and staff about sexual misconduct on campus.